Lion and Magic Boy

Well, it’s been quite a month, July. Has it been that way for you too? One moment I’ve totally got a handle on things and in the next it feels like the universe has ripped a hole in the fabric of time and my life is leaking out through it. There was some major intenseness in the month, and all the while I’ve either had myself convinced I was on top of it all, or I knew I was in deep trouble and just rode the dark waves.

So I’m not all that unhappy to see July go, even though I know better than to wish my life away at this point.

However! There’s brightness on the horizon, apparently, and resolution. And meanwhile we are urged to enjoy and play. Well, that sounds good, doesn’t it? And all this advice comes to you from the new monthly message up at LightSpring Transformations. (Oh! And while you’re there, check out my new offering, a personalized, channeled, annual report prepared for you or someone you love! Ooooh! I know you want one!)

So this explains why I was compelled to order some luscious Lush soap today (this is very much fun, by the way!). Yep, I’m right on top of things!

Enjoy! And I’m planning a sensual, allowing August. How about you?

I’m convinced that there’s pretty much a reason for everything. True, some things can be completely random perhaps, but for the most part I find meaning in almost everything that happens. I can drive myself crazy with analyzing past events, replaying the tapes of long-dead conversations to glean the hidden meanings from them.

And whenever I’m feeling stuck in some situation that doesn’t feel good, I figure there’s a lesson in it somewhere. Ooh! Self-flagellation, yay! You’d think I’d look for the lessons in the joyous occasions, wouldn’t you? But no! Learning through PAIN! Isn’t that what life is?

Actually it’s not. Growth through joy is not only possible, but it’s preferable. It’s just that culturally we’re not set up for it at this point. Maybe one day.

At any rate, I’m in the midst of multiple situations, all relationship-oriented (because we do our best learning through interaction with other people, you know—interacting only with self gets old after awhile), that don’t always feel good, so I’m doing my best to find meaning in it all. Maybe you do this too.

So it’s no surprise to me that this month’s Message up over at LightSpring Transformations, where I display some of my many talents, is all about that. Go have a look. And then come back here and commiserate.

[tags]self-flagellation, growth through joy, LightSpring Transformations, channeling[/tags]

In case you still haven’t made it over to the Blogger’s Choice Awards page, I thought I’d include a link for voting rather than forcing you to hunt for me among all the other Hot Mommy Bloggers nominated there. Which there are many of. So I haven’t a chance in hell, but that shouldn’t keep you from voting for me! I am hot, after all. Hot, hot, hot. If only you knew. So vote for me, as it’s unlikely I’ll ever run for anything, ever, and then one day you can look back on your life and feel it’s complete, having cast this one random vote. For me. Which you totally want to do. Right now.

[tags] Hottest Mommy Blogger, Blogger’s Choice Awards [/tags]

Remember when I was whining about writing that novel last November? I know you’ve been wondering what the hell ever happened to it. I know I have.

It actually hasn’t done much since last November, and as spring was approaching it started begging me to let it out and get some fresh air. Okay, whatever. I’ll let it out, some of it anyway, on one condition. It’s gonna want feedback, this thing, so I’m groveling to you now, asking, nay begging, for commentudinous commentary.

Okay.

Ready?

Here we go then.

[It's a little shy, maybe you could be more, well, encouraging?

That's better. Thanks.]

Here goes then.

Here we go.

Any time now.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Married at 19, divorced at 22, Kate spent her 20’s in a haze of work and not-work. Weekends were never her own as she was generally appointed to cover for those who had families and homes to go to, her coworkers breezily departing in a flurry of hasty goodbyes as they left for their other lives, the lives away from the office, leaving Kate alone with silent desks and papers to sort and file. Apart from work, Kate stayed home with her cat mostly, but at 29 decided that she had had enough of this life and it was time to make something better happen.

That’s how she came to file a personal ad in the Pennysaver, the throwaway circular attached by rubberband to everyone’s doorknob so as to force them to detach it, unroll it, and maybe even read it before throwing it away, as surely 98% of people in Kate’s neighborhood likely did.

Ironically, when Kate was 11 she begged her parents for a chance at taking a job. She wanted a full paper route like the boys in the neighborhood had, awakening early before the town arose, riding through the mysterious semi-darkness alone and with creaking bicycle wheels, laden with hundreds of heavy papers in the canvas saddlebags behind them, then expertly tossing the paper just so, so that it would land with a quiet plop squarely on the doorstep, awaiting the moment when Mr. Smith or Mrs. Smith would step out of their house, glance around shyly or boldly as was their particular mien, wrapping a robe around themselves more tightly perhaps, taking a quick breath of the frosty pre-dawn air while allowing that brief glance into their abode, cavelike and secure with a family portrait hung on the wall behind as if to remind them that This is Where They Are, then furtively or defiantly grasping that newspaper and bringing it into the fold of home and hearth, to be unwrapped in the ceremony that marked the beginning of a new day.

Kate wanted to be a part of people’s lives like that, so she wangled an audition with one of the seasoned paper boys of her neighborhood. Her conduct on this audition would be passed along to the route manager who ultimately would decide whether she was fit to join the ranks of the early-morning army that fanned the town with the day’s news. She awoke early in the stillness that was 3:30 am, surprised by her own fatigue yet curiously energized by her task and by the promise of this daily rhythm and the $30 or so it would bring to her passbook savings account each month, to be turned later into something so special she dared not even think about yet what it might be. The neighbor boy instructed Kate in the art of folding the newspapers just so. Kate was surprised, as she had assumed that the riding and the throwing would be the largest part of her task, yet here they were, quietly folding and rubberbanding on his livingroom carpet, for a good hour before the papers were ready for distribution. Kate finger’s fumbled with the rubber bands, and she worried about the black ink smears on her fingers. When the hour was over there were smudges on both cheeks from when she had smoothes stray strands of hair back in her concentration. Soon she found a rhythm to the fold, turn, slide motions of the work, and felt pleased that she had mastered this so quickly.

“This is an easy day”, said the neighbor boy. “You should see it on Sundays.”

“Sundays?” asked Kate.

“Yep. They’re full of inserts. Sunday funnies. All that”, answered the boy. “This is nothing.”

Kate was a little deflated.

The boy instructed her to fill the canvas saddlebag while he brought his bicycle out of the garage. She was surprised by the heaviness of the bag as she lifted it to bring it to him. She could barely lift it high enough to place over the rear fender of his bike.

Kate got on her own bike, the brown Schwinn she received as a surprise on her 10th birthday, and they were off in the still, silent dawn. The sky lightened a little and she could see glimpses of faint pink and purple through the trees.

“Now the first thing you gotta remember,” said the neighbor boy, breaking the silence and with it Kate’s reverie and wonder at the stillness of the early morning, “Is to get it on the porch. Like this”, and he expertly tossed a paper sidehanded, so quickly Kate barely saw his casual motion, so that it landed with a neat quiet plop on the porch of the house they were passing. “Here, you try.”

Kate took a paper and held it in her hand. Should she throw right-handed or left? she wondered. She was right-handed but the house was on the left side of the street. Well, here goes, she thought.

The paper landed in the bushes, far short of its mark.

“You gotta go get that!” yelled the paper boy as he rode off to the next house on his route.

Kate stopped and got off her bike, carefully parking it on its kickstand, and gingerly approached the house where she had thrown the paper. Would the house’s occupants see her? she worried. Would they come out and yell at her? “Hey, who do you think you are, skulking around here in the middle of the night? I’m gonna call your parents!”

Kate rooted around in the bushes, and finally found the newspaper, a little damp from the morning dew still on the ground. She brushed it off on her pants and slowly walked with it to the porch, placing it very quietly and gently on the doormat. She wondered if she should ring the doorbell, to signal that the newspaper was delivered and ready for consumption, but decided against it. Instead, she got back on her bike and peered into the lightening gloom of the street. The neighbor boy was nowhere to be seen.

Kate pedaled to the nearest intersection and looked both ways. No paper boy. She rode all around the neighborhood, crossing and recrossing the route he had outlined for her back at his house. She never saw him.

She rode back to the neighbor boy’s house and waited for him in the driveway for awhile, then sadly rode home, put her bike back in its place in the garage, careful not to scratch the big blue Pontiac housed there, and went in her room and lay fully clothed on her bed until it was time to be up for school, the weight and shame of failure too great to afford her any sort of rest.

Her career as a paperboy was apparently over.

Even though Kate was a failure as a regular paperboy, her parents thought she could manage the once-weekly opportunity (this is how they presented it: an opportunity! You, too, can strike it rich!) to deliver the Pennysaver. All she had to do was attach each tiny paper rolled-up to every doorknob on every porch, just once a week. Easy, right?

Kate felt foolish wearing the canvas newspaper poncho, the word “Pennysaver” emblazoned boldly across front and back as if to magnify her shame of holding a job distributing what was essentially junk mail, bird-cage lining, filler for the trash can, which held 200 thin tubes exactly the size and shape of a few sheets of rolled-up sheet of typing paper. Kate had already spent an hour rolling and rubberbanding those tubes. She knew they would likely be thrown away as soon as they were detached from the doorknobs. Her parents always threw theirs away, and Kate herself had never even read one. But for $11 a month she walked weekly around her neighborhood, hoping no one she knew would see her, approaching each porch and securely attaching each paper to the house’s doorknob. Sometimes people would see her approach and would open their doors, surprising Kate and alarming her somewhat, as this was out of the ordinary arena of expectation, this having to deal directly with the paper’s recipient, and she would offer the paper shyly, mutely, eyes cast downward, knowing it would probably go unread directly into the trash. The recipient would accept the paper sheepishly, as if accepting an unwanted gift, and then silently close the door again in comment as to the unworthiness of the gift received.

Now the grown-up Kate was receiving those gifts herself, and one day something compelled her to open her weekly Pennysaver and read it instead of throwing it away as she so often automatically did, rubber band still attached.

And there, amid the poorly-spelled ads for old washing machines, broken-down mattresses, and used dinette sets, was an entire page of personal ads. Love wanted. Love for the taking. Find your mate here.

After having had an intensely torrid, secretive affair with a married man from the office who promised her the moon but ended up, after a year and a half, not riding off into the sunset with Kate when he finally split with his wife as promised but finding instead a new girlfriend entirely, unbeknownst to Kate who was told the news by one of the secretaries instead of the skulking sneak himself, Kate was finally healed but lonely. It was time for something new.

~~~~~~~~

[By the way, I hate to even bring it up, but just so you know, this is all copyrighted, meaning it belongs to me and only me. So don't even think about it.]

[tags]novel, writing, NaNoWriMo[/tags]

I’ve mentioned before that I’m writing for Nerve.com’s new online magazine, Babble, at a blog called Strollerderby. Go check out one of my posts for today!

My “other” thing I do has to do with intuitive, channeled readings, helping people gain information about their lives and relationships to help make sense of things. Last week I began a weekly “Friday Freebie” to give a taste of what I do; if you’re interested in more, find the LightSpring Transformations link in the sidebar for more information or to set up a personal reading for yourself or for someone you love.

Happy Friday, everyone!

Greetings.

We have told you that this is a year of action, and for many of you this will seem burdensome, this call to action, but we see that for the majority, great changes will occur seemingly with little effort. Oh, the work has been done, of course, but much of what felt so much like a struggle last year is now coming to fruition. You have earned this, but we counsel also not to stop and rest on your laurels too much, or a stagnation will occur. No, allow yourself to remain within the flow of energy that course through your universe at this time and you will find yourself most likely in just the place you truly wished to be by year’s end.

Go then, and feel free to dream your dreams of the future, as you will surely catch them in one manner or another. Take others along with you for the ride, as this will be also a year mainly of joy.

Be at peace, for you are loved.

Being naturally somewhat expressive and feeling that one of the many reasons I am here and writing like this is to share it with an admiring public, I’ve looked into, here and there, various ways in which people claim that blog traffic can be increased. Not that I’ve actually followed through with most, or that they’ve yet been successful, but my day will come (or it won’t), and still I can educate myself about What To Do.

One thing that made many suggestion lists was to list my blog on blog search sites. Ooh, I like that one! Easy, quick, just a few clicks and I’m there. Right?

But wait. They’re asking me to, well, define my blog.

Uh oh.

What am I?

Life blog? Okay. Yeah. Check.

Mommy blog? Ugh. Hate the title, but I guess so. I am a mom, after all, and I do mention the children. So…yeah. Check.

Down syndrome blog? Ooh, this is getting harder. I hate labels. Well, yes, Eric does have DS, but, does my blog? Hmm. I don’t know about this one. But I do talk about DS, so, well, check.

Spiritual blog? I have mentioned my “other” life, right? Where I’m a, uh, psychic? Sort of? I mean, it’s what I do. And it is who I am, part of it, so, well, okay. Check.

See my problem?

I’m “supposed” to have a niche. But I fit in so many places.

Too bad.

I’m not sure any of us fit in just one box or another.

So what the hell, I’ve decided to bring you more! of! everything!

With that in mind, here’s a little piece that came in tonight, just for you:

This is a momentous time. As the world awaits the repercussions of the execution of arguably one of the most reviled men in history, Saddam Hussein, it also is poised for peace. The prospect of peace across much of the world’s surface area is greater this day than it has been in 20 years. Indeed, then, it is a momentous time.

Some of you may have noted the astrological peculiarities of this time. This, indeed, is yet another reflection of the great changes in the offing for the race known in this place as human. This is a time of great manifestation. It has been said, and we concur, that you are the reality that you create. Why not, then, become a co-creator and make what it is you most love? Why not gain access to all the locked-away information gathered about your innermost self and all the lives you have had, will have, and are having; do you not want more than anything the connection that this would bring with all of your selves? And in so doing would bring also such a connection with all of humanity?

We have stated before, and we will say this again, that the reason for experiencing life as you know it on the physical plane is simply to have and to know relationships between yourself and other people. That’s it. There is no more. And that is enough, isn’t it? The manifestation of every known life circumstance, every possible relationship interaction, is what you have chosen to live and learn from. This, then, is your job, your reason for being.

Do, then, attempt amid the hustle and bustle of normal daily life, to hold within yourself the awareness that you are indeed here for a reason, a very great reason. Hold also, if you will, the expectation that there is indeed something “more” out there, something more in store.

We urge you, then, to breathe with the great possibilities that exist for not only your personal future but also for the future of your race. You are, indeed, poised at the very edge of something momentous. Remember this moment years hence when you can then look back and say, “I was there. I saw the changes.”

Go in peace.

Have a wonderful night.

P.S. You like this? Come back next Friday for more, or you can visit me on my website.

[tags]friday freebie, channeling, psychic[/tags]